Developers tend to build and test software on their local laptops, but these machines often lack the necessary resources to run an entire development environment efficiently. Large companies have built custom systems to move development tools and testing to the cloud, but this kind of approach has often been out of reach for smaller companies.
DevZeroa startup launched by a former Uber engineer, has built a system that allows developers to build and test code in the cloud, taking the load off the local machine and supposedly freeing up developers time spent waiting for local builds.
Today, the startup announced $26 million in funding, including a previously unannounced $5 million seed round and a newer $21 million Series A. While it was going, DevZero also announced the general availability of its cloud development platform.
The company’s co-founder and CEO, Debo Ray, says his goal is to simplify the development process for engineers while allowing them to bring whatever tools they want to make that happen.
“If a developer wants to do work, whatever they want to do, how do I give them an environment to actively code and test where they can start building it right away, focusing only on the revenue-generating parts of the business and DevZero can take care of the underlying developer infrastructure,” Ray told londonbusinessblog.com.
He says most developer work is done on laptops these days, and compiling in particular can be time-consuming, with the developer’s machine working much of the time. “Local laptops are very limited in resources. That’s where we bring the flexibility and the external cloud resources to further strengthen the development process,” he said. Moving the development environment to the cloud frees up resources for the compilation process, helping developers get back to work faster.
Ray cut his teeth at Uber. He says when he got there in 2016, there were only a few hundred engineers there. That grew to over 4,000 in the following years, and developer productivity was a major priority. During his time there, he worked on several projects to move most of the laptop development environment to the cloud, and he got the idea to build something more general.
He left the company last January to start DevZero.
Today, the company has 21 employees and is actively recruiting. Ray, who ran a startup before joining Uber, says building a diverse organization is important to him, and he believes it will ultimately result in a better product. “So this is a lesson from my past: in general, I’ve realized that if you bring a group of people from different backgrounds together to solve a problem, you end up with the best solution,” he said.
As for the $21 million Series A, which was led by Anthos Capital with participation from Foundation Capital. Fika Ventures, Foundation Capital and Madrona Venture Group. Foundation Capital led the $5 million seed round with help from Fika and Madrona.